This week’s assignment will encompass the following concepts, some of which will be previewed during the Class 1 lecture orientation:
To start, you will need to create your CARTO account that will be used for the duration of the course. While CARTO has several packages available for signup, we will be using the New School University account. You can find out about the CARTO student pack Here, which is different from the CARTO account you will use for this course. This secondary package requires a valid university email address. If you choose to use this option in the future, we will first need to delete your student account used in this course. In other words, you cannot use the same university email address for two separate CARTO accounts. To follow here, you will utilize your university email account to enact your first CARTO account within the New School University account:
https://thenewschool.carto.com/signup
The New School CARTO platform Signup
If you have any particular problems during your signup, you can query at the Slack #technical-qa channel. Alternatively, you can email the Admin at the University Account:
Note: for weekly assignments that require a data upload to CARTO, keep in mind that your account has a size limit, typically 100mb. You will want to keep an eye on your upload sizes. For this first assignment, anything with a total upload size of <1mb is ideal.
Navigate to Natural Earth Data.
Keep in mind there are 3 scales of data available at Natural Earth. Generally the smallest scale will feature the smallest file sizes:
- To follow is the
test dataset we will use for this assignment guide:
Populated Places - less columns, simple version 36.51kb.
Note: this is the same dataset that is used in the CARTO Guide - Getting Started with CARTO Builder.
.shp format to your local drive. Use QGIS to open the
.shp. Once open, review the attribute table and note the
Population and Rank columns. Either of these columns can be
used for the symbolization component of this assignment:Zip folder contains .shp for populated
places.
## Prepare and Upload Data to
CARTO:
.geojson format. While .shp can be
uploaded to CARTO, it must be zipped correctly. Keep in mind that CARTO
recognizes two default CRS - EPSG:4326 and EPSG:3857. Any data at
Natural Earth will work as default EPSG:4326, and this CRS will be
expressed in the .geojson format for the data.geojson file format for the Natural Earth data.
.geojson data uploaded to CARTO:sucessful upload to CARTO
Note:if the upload fails, refresh the browser and wait a few minutes. Typically this will clear any ‘unknown’ upload errors.
Note: CARTO will add several new columns to the upload dataset. These new columns are discussed in the CARTO Guide - Importing API V1. This guide is very useful to understand the CARTO upload process generally.
For this first assignment, the goal is to create a valid, stylized interactive map from the one dataset uploaded to CARTO. In the example dataset, thematically the population and integer rank for populations make most sense. In the first, proportional symbols for population size would work well; for the integer rank, either proportional symbols could work, or a categorical approach with different colors for different ranks. For your own assignment data, make sure to strategize your symbolization approach. The - Using ‘Style by Value’ with Point Geometries is very helpful here. Alternatively, the guide Aggregation Styles for Point Geometries is another approach that can be used for this assignment.
Click the Create Map icon, lower-right of the dataset interface:
Click Create Map icon, lower-right
Map instance prior to symbolization
Styling tab within the dataset layer
Proportionally styling the points features
Simple Legend Creation for Cities within the Populated Places dataset based on color
Simple Legend Creation for Cities within the Populated Places dataset based on size
Basemap Options with CARTO
To publish the map product, CARTO offers a series of options. Typically in this course, we will be utilizing a programmatic approach to develop weekly maps and the final project. But for now - early in the course - we will utilize the map publication features within CARTO to produce mapping results.
To start, make sure to Toggle the ‘private’ tab to ‘Public - with Link’:
Public - with Link
Publish Tab
Share Link
.txt or
.pdf document.